Re: Not sure how to do this tricky install...

["Justin C. Sherrill" <justin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, August 18, 2006 8:44 am, Jonathon McKitrick wrote:

> I might be interested it trying this.  My new MacBook is so fantastic, I
> have a hard time seeing what I would need another box for.  An airport for
> broadband, g-drive for backup, what can I do with a server?  I'd like to
> do something interesting, but I'm not sure what.  Especially since
> the server has no monitor.

The server can:
- Work as a local backup
- Local large-scale audio or video storage (easier to add/replace drives
in that server rather than in your macbook)
- Hook up a video capture card, a cable connection to your TV source, and
nab video.
- Set up a tool like newsgrab or similar to grab data from various binary
newsgroups, for you to browse at your leisure.  (I did this, and
eventually was able to recreate my cassette tape collection as mp3s.)
- Audio or video jukebox.  I doubt something like MythTV would work, but
you could get close.
- If you have other computers in the home, the server can do backup for them.

Get a dynamic IP mapper set up, like dyndns.org, and:
- Get a domain name
- Host your own email (you can install your own spam filters, and no quota)
- Create a blog
- Keep media there - anything you'd normally collect.
- Create websites on your Mac with iWeb, and upload them there.
- learn some programming/scripting language, and use it to write a small
web application.
- etc. etc

Anything your laptop can do, you can probably do on the server.  However,
the server doesn't need to be turned off, or moved, so it can do it all
the time.

A lot of services are showing up these days that can duplicate these
functions (Gmail, Flickr, anyplace for web hosting, etc.) but you can
still get more control and learn more by setting it up yourself.